Scot free

Meaning

Without incurring payment; or escaping without punishment.

Origin

Dred Scott was a black slave born in Virginia, USA in 1799. In several celebrated court cases, right up to the USA Supreme Court in 1857, he attempted to gain his freedom. These cases all failed but Scott was later made a free man by his 'owners', the Blow family. Knowing this, we might feel that we don't need to look further for the origin of 'scott free'. Many people, especially in the USA, are convinced that the phrase originated with the story of Dred Scott.

The etymology of this phrase shows the danger of trying to prove a case on circumstantial evidence alone. In fact, the phrase isn't 'scott free', it is 'scot free' and it has nothing at all to do with Dred Scott.

Given the reputation of Scotsmen as being careful with their money we might look to Scotland for the origin of 'scot free'. Wrong again, but at least we are in the right part of the world now. 'Scot' is a Scandinavian word for tax or payment. It came to the UK as a form of redistributive taxation which was levied as early the 13th century as a form of municipal poor relief. The term is a contraction of 'scot and lot'. Scot was the tax and lot, or allotment, was the share given to the poor.

Scot as a term for tax has been used since then to mean many different types of tax. Whatever the tax, the phrase 'scot free' just refers to not paying one's taxes.

No one likes paying tax and people have been getting off scot free since at least the 11th century.

The first collected edition of Anglo-Saxon charters was John Mitchell Kemble's Codex Diplomaticus, published in the 13th century. In that he re-published the Charter of 1066, which included:

"Scotfre and gauelfre, on schire and on hundrede."

[This is easily translatable into modern English on knowing that a gavel was a tax or tribute and a hundred was a subdivision of a county or shire.]

An early use of the figurative version of the phrase, i.e. one where no actual scot tax was paid but in which someone escapes custody, is found John Mapley's Green Forest, 1567:

"Daniell scaped scotchfree by Gods prouidence."

An example of the current commonly used form, i.e. 'scot free', comes a few years later, in Robert Greene's Pandosto: or, The Historie of Dorastus and Fawnia, 1588:

These and the like considerations something daunted Pandosto his courage, so that hee was content rather to put up a manifest injurie with peace, then hunt after revenge, dishonor and losse; determining since Egistus had escaped scot-free, that Bellaria should pay for all at an unreasonable price